Help to Ensure the Best Nursing Care for People with PD

Tell a Nurse about a New Free PD Online Course!

People living with or affected by Parkinson’s: Bring this article to your doctor’s office or local hospital and ask them to participate.

Nursing Educators: Show the online course to your students and ask them to complete the online tests at home.

Nurses are often a first point of contact for people living with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Not only do nurses provide medical care, but they also play a key role in ensuring that people with Parkinson’s have the best possible quality of life. Yet many nurses do not have access to current treatment and care strategies to assist people and their families through the complex health system.

A new online course — Parkinson’s Disease Across the Lifespan: A Roadmap for Nurses — ensures that nurses have the opportunity to learn the latest in Parkinson’s comprehensive care. Designed by Parkinson’s nurse specialists, the course was taped in front of a live audience on May 21 at the New York Academy of the Sciences in New York City and webcast to hundreds more nurses throughout the US.

Now available online, the course includes modules discussing the challenges of Parkinson’s throughout the lifespan, and the vital role that nurses can play in managing care. Modules are led by Parkinson’s nurse specialists, physical therapists and people with PD.

Nurses can earn continuing education credits by watching four modules, each of which is approximately one and a half hours in length, and by taking brief exams following each one.

Nurses can complete the course at one sitting, or can finish each module separately. The course will be available online, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, until June 1, 2011.

Lisette Bunting-Perry, Ph.D., R.N., a member of the course faculty, said it all: “The exceptional collaboration among PDF and other Parkinson’s organizations has made this a milestone for movement disorder nursing. This course addresses a critical gap in improving the quality of life for people living with Parkinson’s. Nurses now have access to information to provide evidence-based practice across a continuum of care."